Telephone operator services have long been a familiar part of the telecommunications industry. Historically, telephone operators, accessed by dialing “0,” have provided users with call assistance, number information, billing credits, emergency assistance, and other services. Additionally, live operators within organizations have performed the function of answering calls, connecting calls, informing callers about the availability of the called party, and connecting callers with voicemail. Live operator services have typically been limited to telephony-based, voice-only, service offerings exclusive to service providers as part of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).
The transfer of voice and video traffic over packet-based networks, and especially over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, is rapidly gaining acceptance. While the infrastructure supporting video and voice calls made over a packet-based network is highly reliable, it is still possible that a call cannot be completed as the caller intended. This failure to complete a call may be because the intended call recipient is temporarily unavailable, a failure of the enduser equipment, or a network failure has occurred, for example.
As the industry providing these services continues to grow and supplants traditional PSTN communications, it is increasingly important that it provide a full complement of traditional communications services to users. Thus, there is a need to provide familiar operator services on multimedia video and voice over a packet-switched networks.